My first century was inadvertent. A friend of mine and I did a bike tour in Nova Scotia in the late 1980s, and were aiming for 60 to 75 mile days. One day our planned route was about 80 miles, but a detour -- quite a bit of which ran over coarse gravel roads -- stretched it out to about 110 miles. I was running with front and rear panniers, it was hot, the hole in the ozone layer (remember that?) was right over Nova Scotia and newscasters were advising people to stay inside ... all in all, it was quite a day. The beers we found in the town where we eventually ended up were quite satisfying.